Fear Thy Neighbor episode “Gone to the Dogs” airs at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time, 7:00 p.m. Pacific time. (Beth Clifton collage)
ANIMALS 24-7 details our investigation of dog attack, possible horse racing grudge, & the killings of Harper & Guy Hansman by dog owner Ronald DelSerro
PORT ST. LUCIE, Florida; TORONTO, Ontario––The July 2020 ANIMALS 24-7 investigation of the murders of 11-year-old Harper Hansman and her father Guy Alexander Hansman, 55, helps to frame the narrative for “Gone to the Dogs,” episode 8 of Season 8 of the Fear Thy Neighbor television crime series broadcast by Investigation Discovery.
Harper and Guy Hansman were shot during a July 6, 2020 home invasion by their longtime next-door-neighbor Ronald John DelSerro, who had just received a fine of $500 and a dangerous animal citation from City of Port St. Lucie Animal Control.
Summarizes the Fear Thy Neighbor online preview, “A friendly retired couple delights a family with young children when they move in next door. Then the new neighbors’ dog attacks the children’s mother, setting off a vicious conflict that ends in two shocking murders.”
Beth & Merritt Clifton on screen, and Merritt seated with laptop, during Fear Thy Neighbor interviews. (Beth Clifton collage)
Monday, August 22, 2022
Emailed Fear Thy Neighbor production coordinator Cam Sparks on August 15, 2022 to ANIMALS 24-7 editors Beth and Merritt Clifton, “I wanted to let you know that your interviews for Fear Thy Neighbor will appear in the episode currently entitled ‘Gone to the Dogs,’ which will have its initial broadcast exhibition on Monday, August 22nd, 2022 at 10 p.m., Eastern time, on Investigation Discovery in the U.S.
“This date has been provided to us by the network but is subject to change,” Sparks added.
Directed by Brian Rice, scripted by Carl Knutson, “Gone to the Dogs” features crime scene re-enactments.
Actresses Emma Altomare and Tiffany Babiak play Harper and Monique Hansman, Ralph Macleod plays Guy Hansman, Craig Monk plays Ronald Delserro, and Caro Coltman plays DelSerro’s wife Sandra DelSerro.
Monique and Harper Hansman.
(Facebook photo)
Courtroom testimony plus video
The “Gone to the Dogs” narrative benefits from more than 400 pages of courtroom testimony plus videos that were not yet available when ANIMALS 24-7 posted our two reports, Girl, 11, & father killed over a bull mastiff? Race horses involved too?, and “We’re not just the family who got murdered over the dog.”
But ANIMALS 24-7 had not missed much, and had picked up a great deal of background that no one else had, as Fear Thy Neighbor producer/researcher Justin Kinch mentioned in asking us to tell the whole story on camera in several hours of interviews videotaped at ANIMALS 24-7 board member Jill Ishi Campbell’s now closed Someday Farm vegan bed-and-breakfast.
Ronald DelSerro with Roxy the mastiff- pit bull. (Beth Clifton collage)
Bull mastiff
The “Gone to the Dogs” story began on March 4, 2020, when Monique Hansman, 53, was mauled by a free-roaming bull mastiff named Roxy, owned by neighbors Ronald and Sandra DelSerro, 82 and 78, respectively.
Roxy was also alternately described in police and court documents as a bull mastiff and an Italian mastiff, a term also used to describe Cane Corsos and Neopolitan mastiffs.
Whatever Roxy was, she was a big, powerful, notoriously ill-behaved dog who was in the act of attacking Rucca, the Hansman family’s leashed Labradoodle, when Monique Hansman intervened.
Monique Hansman testified later in court that Roxy bit her arm and ear, inflicting a gash to her head, for which she was treated at St. Lucie Medical Center.
Hansman family dog, believed to be Rucca.
Harper Hansman witnessed the attack, and also testified about it.
Repeated violations of a home quarantine order and at least two other instances of Roxy running at large followed.
Instead of keeping Roxy properly fenced, as the dangerous animal citation belatedly required, Ronald DelSerro came home from court, grabbed two handguns, walked next door, and shot Guy Hansman, 55, Monique’s husband and sweetheart since she was 10 years old.
Ronald DelSerro then followed Harper Hansman and her young cousin as they fled upstairs to Harper’s bedroom, fatally shooting Harper after she called 911.
And then, under police siege, Ronald DelSerro shot himself, never to face even a semblance of legal justice.
Harper and Guy Hansman.
(Facebook photo)
Why did city do nothing?
Frustratedly demanded Monique Hansman in the weeks afterward, “Why is it that when I called my city officials for months (mayor’s office, city attorney, animal control, and police) and told them how dangerous they [the DelSerros and their dog Roxy] were, they did nothing? Why is it that the dog caused me to have a $22,000 hospital bill and a $1,000 vet bill, but everyone feels sorry for their dog?” who was euthanized at request of Sandra DelSerro two days after Guy and Harper Hansman were murdered.
Monique Hansman made clear that she holds Sandra DelSerro as well as Ronald DelSerro responsible for the string of incidents preceding the murders, with considerable reason, as the courtroom transcripts eventually made clear. Ronald DelSerro suffered from diagnosed dementia, yet Sandra DelSerro allowed him to keep guns in every room of their home and in their car.
Monique Hansman. (WPBF photo)
“Constantly had to hide”
“We constantly had to hide from them!” Monique Hansman recounted. “We hid for months. We lived like prisoners in our own home and then Ronald DelSerro murdered them, all over a $500 fine and a requirement to put up signs on the fence saying the dog was dangerous. He murdered my husband and child over $500 bucks and a sign.”
Monique Hansman reserved particular contempt for former Port St. Lucie mayor Gregory J. Oravec, whose Facebook page boasts that during his tenure, beginning in 2014, Port St. Lucie has been “named the safest large city in Florida.”
Oravec, Monique Hansman mentioned, “lives on my block and ignored my pleas for help, yet showed up at my private family viewing after being told I had no desire to meet with him.”
Larry Hansman, foreground on Livingston, horse #6, was in August 1963 involved in only the seventh triple dead heat in U.S. thoroughbred racing, and the first to involve a daily double. Sidney LeJeune, riding Royal Redress (middle), and Heriberto Hinojosa, riding Mr. S. Chance (rail), were the other contestants.
(Beth Clifton collage, from AP Radiophoto)
Ronald DelSerro was horse racing cheat
Part of the back story to Ronald DelSerro’s shooting rampage may have been long-smoldering resentment of Guy Hansman’s father and Harper Hansman’s grandfather Larry Hansman’s considerable stature in thoroughbred racing, as first a renowned jockey and later a well-respected racing judge.
Ronald DelSerro, after making millions of dollars building housing tracts in Pennsylvania, lost millions of dollars investing in racehorses. The four DelSerro horses won 50 races in seven years, but on March 18, 1996 the most successful Delserro horse, Accession, tested positive for doping with a drug called Etorphine, a semi-synthetic opioid also known as elephant juice.
The episode effectively ended the racing careers of both Ronald DelSerro and trainer David Monacci, who had already served a previous suspension for doping horses before DelSerro hired him.
(Merritt Clifton collage)
Fear thy Neighbor debuted with dog attack case
“Gone to the Dogs” will be the second episode of the Fear Thy Neighbor to originate out of a dog attack. The television crime series debuted in April 2014 with “Lies Lawns Murder,” detailing a case in which a pit bull kept by disabled Vietnam veteran Roland Younce, 63, of Lenoir, North Carolina, repeatedly roamed at large, menacing neighbors.
The pit bull in January 2008 injured the five-and-six-year-old daughters of next-door-neighbor Tony L. Moore, 44, who was confined to a wheelchair.
(Beth Clifton collage)
26 calls to 911 in 18 months
Moore sued Younce for $1,910 to cover his daughters’ medical bills, but lost the case, apparently because the daughters were on Younce’s property when bitten.
During the next 18 months police reportedly responded to disturbance calls from both households on at least 26 occasions.
Finally, on May 27, 2009, Moore shot the pit bull after the pit bull chased the Moore family cat up onto the Moore front porch. Both Moore and Younce called 911.
Merritt, Teddy, & Beth Clifton.
Shooting from ambush, Younce wounded sheriff’s deputy Marty Robbins, who was first to respond, Moore, and Moore’s younger daughter.
Younce then wounded police sergeant Tom McManus before other responding officers shot Younce dead.
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I will do my best to stay up long enough Monday night Aug 22 to watch Fear Thy Neighbor on the Investigation Discovery channel. I’ve seen several episodes of the program in the past.
Typical scenario: new neighbors are greeted by next-door neighbors and all is hunky-dory until the new neighbors’ flower garden crosses the property line of the old neighbors by six inches, and then all hell breaks loose until one or more neighbors is shot to death.
Congratulations Animals 24-7 on your coverage of this story and your contribution to and appearance on the upcoming show. “Good fences make good neighbors,” Robert Frost wrote in his poem “Mending Wall,” but once a spark of hatred is lit, no amount of fencing can stop the rancor from exploding into violence.
Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns. http://www.upc-online.org
Hoping to catch this episode, though I avoid the series because I have neighbors from hell. About the best thing I can say about them is that they do not have a dog.
Sharing with gratitude.
I think this entire episode “Gone to the Dogs” was terribly tragic.
The dog in the show was not a Bullmastiff. It looked more like a Cane Corso.
That being said, I do take issue with how the Mastiff Breed was portrayed.
I have an English Mastiff and a Bullmastiff. They are definitely family dogs. They are NOT fighting dogs. The Mastiff breed is known as Gentle Giants.
Sandra Tocyloski appears to be unaware that mastiffs, throughout their entire 2,000-odd-year documented history, have been bred and used almost entirely as fighting and war dogs, from the Roman “molossus” to the slave-hunting “Cuban bloodhounds” of the 18th and 19th centuries, to the bull mastiffs, Cane Corsos, Presa Canarios, Dogo Argentinos, and Cane Corsos of today. Even those few mastiff variants known for other work, e.g. the St. Bernard, are still essentially repurposed weapons, with a high incidence of biting and mauling relative to the average dog, off the chart compared to setters and pointers, who are the safest large dogs.
Crossed with hunting terriers, mastiffs are also half or more of the lineage of pit bulls.
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Hamilton Smith provided the foundation for the Kennel Club breed definition of mastiffs in The Natural History of Dogs (1839-1840), illustrating their various unique physical and behavioral attributes by describing an instance in which a mastiff killed a burglar.
NewspaperArchive lists no instance of any dog being called a “gentle giant” before cartoonist Ed Dodd applied the term to the Great Dane in his “Mark Trail” strip of August 7, 1960. A Newfoundland was then called a “gentle giant” in an Associated Press photo caption on August 15, 1963. The first reference to a mastiff-type dog as a “gentle giant” came in a 1968 puff piece touting Rottweilers, who have since then killed more than 120 Americans, second only to 600-plus killed by pit bulls.
All mastiff types combined, including pit bulls and Rottweilers, are currently about 9.3% of the U.S. and Canadian dog population, but have accounted for 76% of the dog attack fatalities, as ANIMALS 24-7 has meticulously logged, case by case, since 1982.
For further relevant history, please see Cane Corso: A pit bull by any other name.
Editors’ note:
Beth in Fear Thy Neighbor, episode “Gone to the Dogs,” accurately explained that “Mastiffs are not family dogs. They don’t protect the family. They are fighting dogs,” as the easily verifiable history above and for that matter, even the Wikipedia entry for the “English mastiff” amply demonstrates. Besides Sandra Tocyloski herself, several other breeders and fanciers of various mastiff subtypes have responded to this history, and to Beth’s summary thereof, by attempting to post links to “official” mastiff histories and behavioral descriptions from breed clubs and popular online references derived from breed club literature.
It appears necessary at this juncture to point out that ANIMALS 24-7 publishes factually verifiable information. This excludes the fanciful tales concocted by breeders and fanciers over the decades to sell dogs. If a “breed history” is to meet the test of historical veracity, it must conform to the historical record as compiled contemporaneous with the times, cited by authors, academics, journalists, scientists, and anyone else having occasion to document the uses and behavior of dogs.
Most “official” kennel club histories depart considerably from history verifiable from other sources, especially in the pretense that the relatively tiny number of pedigreed show dogs are in any way representative of the traits of the majority of dogs displaying the breed characteristics and called by the breed name.
Mastiff history has particularly suffered from the parallel efforts of some breeders to protect their business by disguising the murderous origins of every mastiff breed type, even while making sure to use code words such as “loyal” and “protective” to make sure buyers understand the dogs they are selling are fearsome monsters. Others meanwhile openly strive to produce ever larger, fiercer mastiff variants for the very same purposes that the Romans used them: to fight both humans and other animals, and to guard prisoners and property.
I was going to watch the episode but deleted it instead because Beth Clifton’s remarks regarding Mastiffs.The Delserros weaponized their dog and it was a gun that murdered two people. That would appear to be the facts.
Most people purporting to offer a comment would not open with an assertion of intentional ignorance, but rational thinking is clearly not among Patricia Bentley’s attributes. As “Gone to the Dogs” demonstrates, Roxy was already fully “weaponized” and aggressively menacing Monique Hansman within minutes of arrival in the DelSerro household. The DelSerro’s own registration paperwork identified Roxy alternately as a bull mastiff and as an “Italian mastiff,” or Cane Corso; either way, she came from a long line of dogs bred to be weapons, with no need for special training to be deadly. By contract, the previous DelSerro family dog, a small poodle, could not have been “weaponized” short of strapping a bomb to her.
Meanwhile, had Bentley bothered to watch “Gone to the Dogs,” she would know that both Beth & I, and everyone else quoted at any length, pointed out that Ronald DelSerro really had no business keeping any weapons, whether or not they were weapons capable of pulling their own triggers.
Sandra says mastiffs are gentle giants.
And pit bull enthusiasts say pit bulls were bred to be nanny dogs. Both of these statements are urban legends and not based in fact!
Of note is that the first application of the “gentle giant” appellation to a mastiff, specifically a Rottweiler as detailed above, in 1968, and the 1971 invention of the “nanny dog” myth, by pit bull breeder Lillian Rant, both came as many white people responded to racial integration by acquiring “family protection” dogs who were markedly larger, fiercer, and far more likely to turn on their owners than any dogs commonly kept in households before then. The entire mastiff dog category, for instance, amounted to just one half of one percent of the U.S. dog population during the 1900-1950 time frame. Pit bulls were also slightly under 1%. (See data at https://www.animals24-7.org/wp-content/uploads/Dog-breeds-2022.pdf.)
You both did a great job.
What a sick couple. My heart goes out to that family that suffered so much loss. Beware of neighbors who are a gun nut, who hold a grudge and who own a fighting dog. Doesn’t even have to be all three either.
Right. A senile ex-criminal with a house full of guns. What could go wrong?
That dog needed a better home not put down. So sad.
Sandra DelSerro had Roxy euthanized after Port St. Lucie animal control advised her that Roxy was not a suitable candidate for rehoming. Roxy had already been surrendered to Port St. Lucie animal control once for dangerous behavior before being rehomed to the DelSerros. Why Roxy was rehomed to the DelSerros has never been adequately explained. While with the DelSerros, Roxy severely mauled Monique Hansman and the Hansman family dog, and menaced other neighbors while running at large.